"And this is my story as I've tried to uncover the mysteries
of the pioneer women in my own family--Ida, Mary Lillian, Zoe, and
Phebe Ann, the one they left behind."

"Saving Family Memories" workshop in the Genealogical Division of
the Albuquerque, New Mexico, Library.

PRAISE FOR THE WOMAN WITHOUT A VOICELouise Farmer Smith has written a part of history we aren’t taught in classrooms. She has shown us the true resilience of her female ancestors and provides a brief glimpse of what it really meant to be a wife of a pioneer. The Woman Without a Voice is a heartbreaking, moving, and ultimately inspiring memoir about the strength of women.
JoAnna Woolridge Wall, J.D. Lecturer, Women’s and Gender Studies Program University of Oklahoma
"Husband and wife sat side by side on the wagon bench. Though they looked down the same rough road, diaries suggest that they lived in different worlds.” Based on her own family’s experience, Louise Farmer Smith sets us squarely by the side of the woman...A compelling tale and an inspiration to anyone considering writing their family’s often complex and difficult history.
Lisa KindrickLibrarian, Geneological Center, Albuquerque

Welcome to Cadillac, Oklahoma,
a former Dust Bowl town with ambitions to be a garden spot. The two
main characters, the young sheriff and an aging lawyer, join forces
to defend a teenager accused of murdering her abusive father. Some
citizens take sides, but many in Cadillac's population are
overwhelmed with their own problems of domestic abuse, incest,
religious rivalry, and stale marriages. Chaos, politics, and a lot
of humor make this book both moving and funny. Book clubs will talk
their heads off. You know these people. Come find yourself in
Cadillac.

One character describes Cadillac as "wide but not deep.” So jump in anywhere and enjoy!

Praise for Cadillac, Oklahoma

"As Sherwood Anderson created Winesburg, Ohio, Louise
Farmer Smith presents a subtle, deep and generous
portrait of the fictional Cadillac, Oklahoma. The voices
and visions of its citizens are at turns sweet, cruel,
ignorant, and full of yearning, and always they are the
real thing. On every page of this smart collection,
Smith's good humor and light touch brighten the dusty
landscape." ---Bonnie Jo Campbell, bestselling author of
the story collection Mothers, Tell Your Daughters and
the National Book Award Finalist, American Salvage.

"Louise Farmer Smith has created a community of beguiling
characters living in the fictional town of Cadillac,
Oklahoma. I would place this collection of short stories on
the shelf between Spoon River Anthology and Winesburg, Ohio
but not far from the stories of Anton Chekhov that have
inspired writers for generations. The short story is one of
America's great contributions to literature, and if Louise
Farmer Smith has her way, the tradition will continue. She
takes her characters seriously allowing them and their
landscape to transcend territory and time. It is a very
impressive book." ---Edward Swift author of Splendora, Miss
Spellbinders Point of View and other fine books

"CADILLAC, OKLAHOMA... is a raw, beautiful, tender story
combining facets of Sherwood Anderson in its homage to Winesburg,
Ohio, with touches of Harper Lee...[and] with aspects of courtroom
drama, and psychological tension. Townspeople come face to face with
the quiet evil that wears a mask of religious and sexual purity."
---Collin Fletcher

A crowd of over 70 people gathered at THE MUSEUM OF THE WESTERN PRAIRIE for “The Woman in the Dugout,” my program of period photographs, history of dugout dwellers (beginning with a photo of my own family’s dugout in 1898) and the dugout story from ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF MARRIAGE.

In the flat, treeless part of western Oklahoma where my family settled dugouts were necessary for shelter and buffalo dung was the necessary fuel for cooking and heating. This woman looks to be the same age as my great aunt Minn, an educated and lady-like woman who claimed to be the best chip gatherer in Custer County.

The cost emotionally, physically and financially was immense for these unknown settlers. My own family, seven adults and a baby girl, arrived in Custer County with two dozen hens, four pigs, two horses, a pony and a cow. They were $450 in debt and had 30 cents to live on until making crop.

The last to leave in a photo with the author at the winter book launch of One Hundred Years of Marriage.

The Pushcart Prize is for short story writers the
equivalent of the Oscars for the movies. In 2005 "Return to Lincoln” was nominated for a Pushcart by The Bellevue Literary Review. This story is part of ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF MARRIAGE. "Voice of Experience” which opens CADILLAC, OKLAHOMA was nominated for a Pushcart by Cross Timbers in 2014.

ATTENTION BOOK CLUBS: See the CADILLAC, OKLAHOMA
Discussion Suggestions below. The second edition of
ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF MARRIAGE includes Book Club Discussion
Suggestions as well as an interview of the author by Ronna Wineberg,
Senior Fiction Editor at Bellevue Literary Review.

------------------------------

When you step off the train in Cadillac, Oklahoma, you'll wade through currents of hilarity and romance where the
sheriff is in love with the wife of a prominent lawyer, and the
banker's widow and a Las Vegas sex worker team up to beautify
Cadillac.

Not until a young female reporter cracks open the self-satisfied
surface of the town is the folly, anger, and pain revealed.
The resentments of tree-huggers, store-owners, and the town fathers
ignite over a proposal to create a New England-style town green in
this water-starved former Dust Bowl town. This is not
Concord, Massachusetts!

Citizens who don't care about town politics, deal with
domestic abuse, religious rivalry and stale marriages. The
sheriff, Jake Hale, seeks help from a retired
lawyer, Sloane Willard, in an effort to save the life of a teenage girl
accused of murdering the father who raped her.

Before you get back on the train, you will have grown to care about
these people and their thirst for love, beauty, justice and
water.

------------------------------

Book Club Discussion Suggestions for Cadillac, Oklahoma

Reading a story collection is a different experience from reading a
novel. Each story has a beginning, a middle and an end and can be
read separately, so the reader can feel a sense of satisfaction
without finishing the book and can dip in any place, front to back,
to get a good read.

On the other hand, after finishing the first story, "Voice of
Experience," about a 17-year-old boy on the lookout for an older
woman to teach him about sex, the reader may wonder what kind of man
Sloane Willard turned out to be. In the next story, "The Estate,"
Sloane is over sixty years older, a retired lawyer, a town father,
and the head of an ordinary, squabbling family. The details of his
hard life--the loss of his wife and only child, the betrayal by his
next of kin, and his courage in putting his sterling reputation at
risk in one last court case--are told in other stories or only
glimpsed as you read by.

Cadillac, Oklahoma is a town one citizen described as "wide but not
deep," so jump in any place and enjoy.

The following questions are not homework. They are merely matches to
ignite your own thoughts and discussion :

Did you find yourself in Cadillac?

What was the effect on the town of Hillary's Cadillac Voices in
the local newspaper?

Was the body count (six) alarmingly high or about right for a
town this size?

Was the sheriff, Jake Hale, a tragic hero--flawed, but
admirable? Or was he just a weak man?

Why was Hillary, the reporter and single mother, having trouble
sleeping?

Victoria St. Buckingham, the sex worker from Las Vegas, enters
the story and then leaves. How did she change things in the town of
Cadillac?

After being tempted to burn down her husband's new glass house,
in "The American Mind," how does Judianne remake herself by the end
of the book?

Issues regarding the relationship of the sexes romp through this book including in the
story, "Sloane on Trial." Do these stories add up to an attitude by
the author, or are they representative only of the characters?

In this book the women struggle with love and work. Are they
modern women? If not, what is holding them
back?

"Sugar House," p. 182, is perhaps the oldest story in this
book. I wrote it in the middle 1990's and didn't believe it
would ever be published though it found a prestigious home in
the Virginia Quarterly Review. The editors' faith in it
encouraged me to believe in myself as a writer and to continue
to write about wonderful Oklahoma characters of the sort who
make up Cadillac, Oklahoma.

Enjoy!
Louise Farmer Smith

---------------------------------------

One Hundred Years of Marriage, A Novel in Stories, pierces the
myths parents tell about why they got married. The book follows the
mismatches of four generations of one American family 1970 to 1870,
moving backward, so the reader is not asking what happens next, but what
went before that shaped these people's marriage decisions. The readers
see what the characters don't know about themselves.

ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF MARRIAGE received a cash award as a finalist for the Prairie Heritage Book Award.

“I loved this book. I admire the risks Louise Farmer Smith took in telling this four-generation story from back to front. As she says in her note to the reader, “By the time we ask, all the compelling details have cooled into whatever myths they’ve chosen to tell us.” To correct and augment this situation, Smith has given us a wonderfully satisfying work of imagination as well as a perceptive dose of social history. I also admired the surprise ending.” Gail Godwin, author of Flora

"One Hundred Years of Marriage: a Novel in Stories" is a series of lovely, imaginative, moving stories of one family over a hundred years of marriages. Not that the marriages explored recommend the institution--but the generosity of spirit, the humor and compassion in Louise Smith's honest, compelling voice, her gift for the telling detail, her sense of the absurd are so winning I was left with a sense of intimacy as if the book was full of secrets I had been chosen to overhear." Susan Richards Shreve YOU ARE THE LOVE OF MY LIFE
Susan Shreve

“One Hundred Years of Marriage is a brilliant and empathic journey into the prehistory of the modern women’s equality movement. Through a series of interlinked historical narratives about dysfunctional marriages, the author explores the many ways that marriage operated tragically upon wives and the ways that dysfunction in one generation can have unanticipated ripple effects in subsequent generations. Yet, throughout the book, the hard lives of the female characters are offset by moments of dignity and caring.” William Eskridge, Jr.,
John A. Garver Professor of Jurisprudence,Yale Law School
and teacher of “Sexuality,
Gender, and the Law.”

"Louise Farmer Smith's novel is as compelling as it is
enchanting-full of wonderful tales, and with a lovely sense of the
strange, sad, and touching ways our destinies are shaped, over time,
by the often odd couplings that bring us into being. One Hundred
Years of Marriage renders the mysteries and complexities of
family life-of how we become who we are-in profound and original
ways." Jay Neugeboren, author of
Imagining
Robert, 1940, The
Other
Side of the World, etc.

"A brilliant observer with the eye that serves both the clinician
and the comedienne, the equal drives for survival and sharing
that power marriage." Starr Review
Starr-review.blogspothttp://starr-review.blogspot.com.